Idlewild [HD]

OutKasts Other Musicals by 8 Mile
Had this movie sustained the cinematic brilliance of its first few minutes, there is no question that it would have been something so out of the ordinary as to become an instant classic. As it is, it may have some cross-and-jostle work to establish itself as one of the Movies of the Year to see, but its flashes of original genius strung together with an operatic plot and dynamic cinematography, make a necklace of great flash and fire. Surely this one, with its embarrassment of talent, will be mentioned in several categories, not only music, at Oscar time. Worth seeing--- absolutely. I can hardly wait for the DVD, so that I can watch its excess to excess.

The film is going to have a generational promotional gap, not just the much-discussed racial one. It can't be dismissed as "the hip-hop Moulin Rouge", as I heard one member of our preview audience critique it coming out of the theater. If she were old enough, she would know that it's more akin to a "hip-hop Caberet", with...

Well...
There's a funny thing about "Idlewild" that few movies can achieve: you know you've seen everything on screen here before, but the movie is filmed, and put together, with such gusto and energy that it's next to impossible not to like.

I would reiterate the plot for you, but I'm not exactly sure what it is. Rooster, played by Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, "inherits" a Depression-era speakeasy called Church and must deal with a ruthless gangster played by "Hustle and Flow" star Terrance Howard. Percivel, played by Andre "Andre 3000" Benjamin, is the son of a mortician who dreams of being a jazz composer who meets and falls for a mysterious woman who comes to sing in the speakeasy.

Or something like that.

"Idlewild" has it's share of problems, that's for sure. The movie is twenty minutes too long and occasionally, mostly during the films final half an hour, gets bogged down in cliches and predicatability. Any moviegoer who has seen there fair share of movies...

And I don't even like Outkast
I'm not much into the hip hop songs created by Andre 3000 & Big Boi, but I've seen this movie a few weeks ago, and I was pleasantly surprised. The plot was a cliché, but the music and the acting were superb (the music was a few notches above the acting, but that's beside the point). Every song in this movie (except for one slow-moving one that's sung in the morticians' chamber) made me want to dance along (but I'm a bad dancer, so. . .). All the 30's dancing in this movie, especially during the end credits, were carefully & beautifully choreographed (mad props go to Hinton Battle). As for the acting, some performances were disappointing and 2-dimensional, like Paula Patton as Angel & Faizon Love as Ace, while others were brilliant and believable, like Terrence Howard as Trumpy and the incredible Ving Rhames as Spats.

In conclusion, I liked this movie. But I wouldn't recommend it to everybody. This is a movie not only for fans of Outkast, but also for fans of the old...

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